Picking Talents used to be a difficult and arduous task that made many World of Warcraft players frustrated. Now things are a bit more simplified and a bit easier to understand where those valuable talent points need to go. We’re going to discuss which talents are important, what they do, and why they’re important for each of the main Druid specializations.

Feral  Cat

For specing into Feral you’ll gain Mangle, your primary combo point generator outside of instances along with Aggression (25% more attack power), and Razor Claws which gives you additional bleed damage for your Mastery. Those come free once you spend that first point into Feral.

While you spend your points you’re going to want to avoid Thick Hide, Pulverize, Natural Reaction, and similar talents that apply to Bear Form only. You won’t get any benefit (or much at all) while in Cat Form and that is primarily for tanks.

You’re going to want to get Feral Charge for sure, which allows you to “jump” at an enemy.

Berserk is the ultimate talent for Feral and gives you 50% Energy cost reduction to your Cat Form abilities, meaning you can use double the amount of skills for the same cost.

Your spare points are going to want to go into Restoration for Master Shapeshifter, but that’s the only talent from that tree you need to focus on.

Feral  Bear

Similar to Cat Form, you’re going to get Mangle which makes Lacerate do more damage, in addition to 25% more attack power and Vengeance, which gives you 5% of the damage taken as attack power (up to 10% of your health). Similar to Cat Druids, you’re going to want to avoid the Cat only talents such as Nurturing Instinct and Blood in the Water.

Berserk gives your Lacerate the passive ability to refresh Mangle and making it cost no rage, which is nifty. Once active it makes Mangle an AoE ability and have no cooldown which is great for generating a massive amount of threat instantly.

Just like Cat Form Druids, take your extra points and head for Master Shapeshifter in Restoration.

Balance  Moonkin

Balance Druids have a lot of options in talents and will want the majority of them. You can safely pick the majority of them and be viable, although some will depend on you play style (run out of mana a lot? Moonglow may be for you, but the outright DPS upgrades are superior).

Starfall is the ultimate and useful for outputting passive DPS and AoEing. Your extra points will want to go into Restoration for Master Shapeshifter and Blessing of the Grove, which currently gives additional Moonfire damage.

Restoration

Like Balance, the majority of talents are good although some like Fury of Stormrage are obvious no-nos. Nature’s Swiftness is a must have to make spells like Healing Touch instant lifesavers while Living Seed is a tank only talent. Efflorescence is an amazing AoE healing ability since it comes free with a Swiftmend.

Tree of Life is the ultimate for Restoration Druids now, which grants them Tree Form which is a cooldown that grants additional healing and modifies some abilities to be more effective.

Extra points will want to head into Balance for Moonglow to help with mana issues.

Building your Spec

As you spend your talent points look for talents that fit your playstyle. As an example, if you PvP a lot then Nature’s Ward is an amazing talent (currently granting a chance at a free Rejuv once below 50% health). In PvE the talent is absolutely horrible when compared to superior talents like Efflorescence.

The talent specs are now much more condensed, so there isn’t much of a right or wrong talent specialization anymore. It’s all about fitting your playstyle and making sure you make the proper choices.

About The Author

Get in the bush with David "Xerin" Piner as he leverages his spectacular insanity to ask the serious questions such as is Master Yi and Illidan the same person? What's for dinner? What are ways to elevate your gaming experience? David's column, Respawn, is updated near daily with some of the coolest things you'll read online, while David tackles ways to improve the game experience across the board with various hype guides to cool games.